On My Way to the New York Tolkien Conference after an ... Interruption

[dawn_felagund]

I am presently on the train to New York, for the New York Tolkien Conference, stopped in Brattleboro in sight of Whetstone, the excellent nanobrewery that changes their beer menu daily. My train left Waterbury ... at 10:20, more than four and a half hours ago

Comments

[heartofoshun]

OMG! She didn't even out me publicly for harassing her all day about my conference presentation. If she is a baby-scholar or a wanna-be scholar, I am an outright fraud! Oh, well, whatever! It will all be history this time tomorrow.

Terrible thing to have endured. Calling the victim a "trespasser" is pretty upsetting--who knows how it happened! If she is Mary Sunshine informing everyone just how bad the accident was, I did not forego the opportunity to tell her how I grew up in a small town with lots of railroads where people were killed on one of the many railroad crossings from time-to-time. Those were among the local horror stories everyone talked about, in addition to coal mine disasters.

[dawn_felagund]

There is a fine line between harassment and collaboration! Remember what I do for a living! I'm used to needy people, and you ain't it!

You're also far from a fraud. You actually did the scholarly part of this paper; I realized today that aside from alluding to a couple of scholars, I didn't have to look in a single book for my part. Yeah yeah, I had to do hours of eye-splitting math, but I actually like doing that so ... And then I got to run off at the mouth about my ideas about what it all meant!

I wonder if it wasn't a suicide. How does one not hear the train hooting as it comes into Brattleboro? Unless one is wearing earphones turned up waaay loud. Mary Sunshine indeed!

[heartofoshun]

You would be surprised to realize how many times I saw children and adults on foot go around those arms/barriers that come down at railway crossings and try to run across the track!

People took that risk so much that my parents constantly warned us to never try it.

It's horrific to think about! Poor Dawn!

[dawn_felagund]

I detest seeing people do stuff like that! (For me, it was always the dumb, needlessly risky shit people would do while driving back in Maryland. Like their lives are worth the three seconds they'll save.)

I don't think we were anywhere near a crossing, so I suspect the person was walking on the tracks.

Our road crosses the railroad twice and it doesn't have a signal, and the trains don't hoot when they go through. (There's like maybe ten houses on a three-mile stretch of road.) I always look twice when crossing there!

[shirebound]

Lake Memphremagog -- What a marvelous name! I grew up northeast of Philadelphia in an area replete with wonderful Native names like that.

[dawn_felagund]

It definitely inspires a lot of, "How do you say that again?!" :D

It's a beautiful lake, too. I need to start posting pictures ...

[rhapsody11]

Having been on a train where someone threw him/herself in front of the train to commit suicide: it is horrible. It is a sound you never will forget, especially once they do tell you what has happened. So I suppose your traincar is not at the front? I also have a friend who is a train conductor and knows stories.. brr.

I saw the photo's of the walk on Bobby's FB wall. Gwen has grown so much, wow! How are things between her and the ol' man.

And oh, I am more than a week behind with my e-mail, but I guess you already suspected that (RL stuff with my brother really threw us off).

[dawn_felagund]

Aww, no worries ever on emails. We both know what the other's life can be at times! Trust me, I am never sitting around tapping my toes and wondering what's keeping you. ;)

I'm not in the front car, thankfully, so I didn't see/hear/feel anything when the person was actually struck. The brakes just went on fast and I heard that fateful "Uh oh" from the conductor ...

I feel for the driver too. It must be a terrible sense of helplessness in a situation like that.

The Goldens get on very well now! Almost overnight, Lance decided that Gwen was a suitable playmate after all. They're going a bit stir crazy now because they want to play and romp with each other, but we haven't put up the fence in the backyard yet (we are waiting on the materials to be made by a local logger), so they are on-leash when outside. Bobby and I do sometimes look the other way when they roughhouse in the house ... ;)

[indy1776]

I feel horrible for the person's family. There's no words. (My guess is the person didn't hear it thanks to headphones; that's what happened on one of the tracks near my house. But it makes me wonder why the vibrations weren't a warning, though maybe they're not as obvious as I think they are.)

Good luck to you and Oshun at the conference tomorrow!

Reading about the mountain mishap made me laugh a little. And the dogs! :D

[dawn_felagund]

I just checked, and there is nothing in the local Brattleboro news yet about the accident. (Vermont, it seems, is not yet on the 24-hour news cycle.) I suspect headphones or suicide. I don't know how obvious the vibrations are either; Bobby and I hike trails sometimes that run along train tracks, but we clear off as soon as we hear a train.

Thanks for the luck! I figure the worst part is over: We've each more or less completed our sections and worked together constantly all week over email and are still friends! :)

We've been snickering over hiking the "wrong mountain" all week. That seems a hard thing to mess up, but Vermont does have a lot of mountains!

[starbrow]

'Trespasser' does seem awfully disrespectful as a way to speak about a person who has just been killed. :(

Here, when it happens, they say 'a person has been struck by a train' and leave you to assume suicide (which it generally is - train tracks are by and large kept inaccessible here in a way they're not in the US, so someone who is on them is really trying to be on them). I've had the good luck to never have been on a train where that has actually happened - I imagine it would be deeply traumatising to witness and I'm glad you were spared anything beyond the sudden braking. The poor driver, though!

I hope the rest of your travelling there and back go smoothly!

[dawn_felagund]

I hope so too! At least arriving at 10:30 PM instead of 6:30 PM means I won't have to navigate Penn Station and the subway during rush hour. (That's like a pathological level of pie-eyed optimism, but it beats despairing that I'M NOT ARRIVING TILL 10:30 PM NOW!! D^:)

I still don't feel like I can complain, though. I didn't die or witness someone getting struck by a train. I'm reminding myself of that to keep my spirits up that I should be walking into my hotel room with my (hopefully) nice comfy bed right now!

I expect it was either headphones or suicide. The Brattleboro news hasn't picked up on it yet. Apparently, this same train killed a couple of people last year, also in Brattleboro, who were trying to cross a railroad bridge and didn't get clear in time. Yikes.

[heartofoshun]

arriving at 10:30 PM instead of 6:30 PM means I won't have to navigate Penn Station and the subway during rush hour

I used to work with people who would regularly work late in midtown to avoid rush hour! Looking at the clock--you must have disgorged from the iron beast just a few minutes ago!

[dawn_felagund]

Praise whomever you want to praise, I am sitting on the floor of my hotel room, eating cheap Indian food and enjoying the half-assed AC!